Chapter 1
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Brushing Up on the Basics
▶ Counting with cardinal and ordinal numbers
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▶ Expressing dates
▶ Telling time
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▶ Reviewing parts of speech
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In This Chapter
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nowing numbers, expressing dates, relating the time
of day, and recognizing parts of speech are essential
Spanish skills you need in everyday life. Surely, the ability
to communicate numbers, times, and dates is completely
indispensable to you on a daily basis. Determining the correct
part of speech to use helps you perfect your oral and written
Spanish.
PY
Counting Down
CO
We start off this chapter with numbers because you need
them in order to express dates and tell time. You use cardinal
numbers (the more popular of the two) to count, to bargain
with a merchant about a price, to express the temperature,
or to write a check. You use ordinal numbers to express the
number of a floor, the act of a play, or the order of a person in
a race or competition.
Using cardinal numbers
You use cardinal numbers many times every day. As a matter
of fact, you probably use them at least once an hour in the
course of normal conversation or in writing. The Spanish cardinal numbers are as follows:
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Spanish Essentials For Dummies
Number
0
Spanish
cero
Number
25
1
uno
26
2
dos
27
3
tres
28
4
cuatro
29
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
cinco
seis
siete
ocho
nueve
diez
once
doce
trece
catorce
quince
dieciséis (diez
y seis)
diecisiete (diez
y siete)
dieciocho (diez
y ocho)
diecinueve (diez
y nueve)
veinte
veintiuno (veinte
y uno)
veintidós (veinte
y dos)
veintitrés (veinte
y tres)
veinticuatro
(veinte y cuatro)
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
101
200
500
700
Spanish
veinticinco
(veinte y cinco)
veintiséis
(veinte y seis)
veintisiete
(veinte y siete)
veintiocho
(veinte y ocho)
veintinueve
(veinte y
nueve)
treinta
cuarenta
cincuenta
sesenta
setenta
ochenta
noventa
cien (ciento)
ciento uno
doscientos
quinientos
setecientos
900
novecientos
1.000
mil
2.000
dos mil
100.000
1.000.000
cien mil
un millón
2.000.000
dos millones
1.000.000.000
mil millones
2.000.000.000
dos mil
millones
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
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Chapter 1: Brushing Up on the Basics
7
You need to keep the following rules in mind when using cardinal numbers in Spanish:
✓ Uno (one), used only when counting, becomes un before
a masculine noun and una before a feminine noun,
whether the noun is singular or plural:
• uno, dos, tres (one, two, three)
• un niño y una niña (a boy and a girl)
• sesenta y un dólares (61 dollars)
• veintiuna (veinte y una) personas (21 people)
✓ You use the conjunction y (and) only for numbers
between 16 and 99. You don’t use it directly after
hundreds:
• ochenta y ocho (88)
• doscientos treinta y siete (237)
✓ You generally write the numbers 16 through 19 and 21
through 29 as one word. The numbers 16, 22, 23, and 26
have accents on the last syllable:
• 16: dieciséis
• 22: veintidós
• 23: veintitrés
• 26: veintiséis
✓ When used before a masculine noun, veintiún (21) has
an accent on the last syllable:
• veintiún días (21 days)
✓ Ciento (100) becomes cien before nouns of either gender
and before the numbers mil and millones. Before all
other numbers, you use ciento. Un (one), which you
don’t use before cien(to) or mil, comes before millón.
When a noun follows millón, you put the preposition de
between millón and the noun. Millón drops its accent in
the plural (millones):
• cien sombreros (100 hats)
• cien blusas (100 blouses)
• cien mil millas (100,000 miles)
• cien millones de dólares (100 million dollars)
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Spanish Essentials For Dummies
• ciento noventa acres (190 acres)
• mil posibilidades (1,000 possibilities)
• un millón de razones (1 million reasons)
✓ Compounds of ciento (doscientos, trescientos) must
change to agree with a feminine noun:
• cuatrocientos muchachos (400 muchachos)
• seiscientas muchachas (600 muchachas)
With numerals and decimals, Spanish uses commas where
English uses periods, and vice versa:
English
6,000
0.75
$14.99
Spanish
6.000
0,75
$14,99
Using ordinal numbers
You use ordinal numbers — those used to express numbers in
a series — far less frequently than cardinal numbers, but they
still have some very important applications in everyday life.
The following chart presents the Spanish ordinal numbers:
Ordinal
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
9th
10th
Spanish
primero
segundo
tercero
cuarto
quinto
sexto
séptimo
octavo
noveno
décimo
The following list outlines everything you must remember
when using ordinal numbers in Spanish:
Chapter 1: Brushing Up on the Basics
✓ Spanish speakers rarely use ordinal numbers after 10th.
After that, they usually use cardinal numbers in both the
spoken and written language:
El siglo quince (the 15th century)
✓ Ordinal numbers must agree in gender (masculine or
feminine) with the nouns they modify. You can make
ordinal numbers feminine by changing the final -o of the
masculine form to -a:
la cuarta vez (the fourth time)
✓ Primero and tercero drop the final -o before a masculine
singular noun:
el primer muchacho (the first boy)
el tercer hombre (the third man)
✓ In dates, primero is the only ordinal number you use. All
other dates call for the cardinal numbers:
el primero de mayo (May 1st)
el doce de enero (January 12th)
Dealing with Dates
Dates are important parts of everyday life (in more ways than
one!). To write out dates in Spanish, you have to practice the
days of the week, the months of the year, and numbers (see
the preceding section).
Expressing the days of the week
If you hear ¿Qué día es hoy? (What day is it?), you should
respond with Hoy es . . . (Today is . . .) and then provide the
name of one of the days listed here:
English
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Spanish
lunes
martes
miércoles
jueves
viernes
sábado
domingo
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Spanish Essentials For Dummies
Unlike the English calendar, the Spanish calendar starts with
Monday.
Here are two more guidelines for talking about days of the
week in Spanish:
✓ Unless you use them at the beginning of a sentence, you
don’t capitalize the days of the week in Spanish:
Lunes y martes son días de vacaciones. (Monday and
Tuesday are vacation days.)
✓ You use el to express on when referring to a particular
day of the week and los to express on when the action
occurs repeatedly:
No trabajo el sábado. (I’m not working on Saturday.)
No trabajo los sábados. (I don’t work on Saturdays.)
Naming the months of the year
If you hear ¿En qué mes . . .? (In what month . . .), someone is
asking you in what month a certain event takes place. We provide the names of the months in Spanish in the following list:
English
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Spanish
enero
febrero
marzo
abril
mayo
junio
julio
agosto
septiembre (or setiembre)
octubre
noviembre
diciembre
Chapter 1: Brushing Up on the Basics
Like days of the week, the months aren’t capitalized in
Spanish:
Junio y julio son meses agradables. (June and July are
nice months.)
Along with the months, you may also want to talk about the
seasons of the year. In Spanish, the seasons are masculine
except for la primavera (the spring):
el invierno (the winter)
la primavera (the spring)
el verano (the summer)
el otoño (the autumn [fall])
Making a date
If you want to ask a passerby or an acquaintance about the
date, politely inquire ¿Cuál es la fecha de hoy? (What is
today’s date?) The person should respond with Hoy es . . .
(Today is . . .) and then use the following formula to express
the correct date:
day + (el) + cardinal number (except for primero) + de +
month + de + year
The following is an example translation, using this formula:
Sunday, April 18, 2010: Hoy es domingo, el dieciocho de
abril de dos mil diez.
Now that you have a handy formula, you need to know a few
more details about writing dates in Spanish:
✓ You express the first day of each month with primero.
You use cardinal numbers for all other days:
el primero de enero (January 1st)
el siete de enero (January 7th)
✓ Use el to express on with Spanish dates:
Partimos el once de octubre. (We are leaving on
October 11th.)
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Spanish Essentials For Dummies
✓ In Spanish, you express years in thousands and hundreds,
not only in hundreds:
1492: mil cuatrocientos noventa y dos (fourteen hundred
ninety-two)
In Spanish, when dates are written as numbers, they follow
the sequence day/month/year, which may prove confusing to
English speakers — especially for dates below the 12th of the
month. You write February 9th as 2/9 in English, but in Spanish
it’s 9/2.
When speaking of dates in everyday language, the words and
expressions that follow may come in handy:
English
a day
Spanish
un día
a week
a month
a year
in
una semana
un mes
un año
en
ago
hace
per
por
during
next
last
last (in a
series)
eve
durante
próximo(a)
pasado(a)
último(a)
la víspera
English
day before
yesterday
yesterday
today
tomorrow
tomorrow morning
Spanish
anteayer
ayer
hoy
mañana
mañana por la
mañana
tomorrow
mañana por la
afternoon
tarde
tomorrow night
mañana por la
noche
day after tomorrow pasado mañana
from
desde
a week from today de hoy en ocho
two weeks from
de mañana en
tomorrow
dos semanas
within one (two) dentro de una
week(s)
(dos) semana(s)
Telling Time
Knowing how to understand, speak, and write time-related
words and phrases is a must for anyone who’s studying a foreign language and planning to put these studies to use (to do
some traveling one day, for instance).
Chapter 1: Brushing Up on the Basics
13
If you hear ¿Qué hora es? (What time is it?), someone wants
to know the time. You should start by responding with the
following:
Es la una + 1 o’clock hour or Son las + any time after 1.
To express the time after the hour (up to and including half
past the hour), use y (and) and the number of minutes. Use
menos (less) + the number of the following hour to express
the time before the next hour (after half past the hour).
You can also express time numerically (as shown in the third
example here):
Es la una y media. (It’s 1:30.)
Son las cinco menos veinte. (It’s 4:40.)
Son las cuatro y cuarenta. (It’s 4:40.)
If you want to discuss at what time a particular event will
occur, you can use a question — ¿A qué hora . . . ? — or
answer with A la una or A las + any time after 1:
¿A qué hora vienen? (At what time are they coming?)
A la una. (At 1:00.)
A las tres y cuarto. (At 3:15.)
The following chart shows how to express time after and
before the hour:
Time
1:00
2:05
3:10
4:15
5:20
6:25
7:30
7:35
8:40
9:45
Spanish
la una
las dos y cinco
las tres y diez
las cuatro y cuarto or las cuatro y quince
las cinco y veinte
las seis y veinticinco
las siete y media or las siete y treinta
las ocho menos veinticinco or las siete y treinta y
cinco
las nueve menos veinte or las ocho y cuarenta
las diez menos cuarto or las nueve y cuarenta y
cinco
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Spanish Essentials For Dummies
Time
10:50
11:55
Spanish
las once menos diez or las diez y cincuenta
las doce menos cinco or las once y cincuenta y
cinco
noon
el mediodía
midnight la medianoche
When expressing time, the words and expressions we present
in the following table may come in handy:
English
a second
a minute
Spanish
un segundo
un minuto
a quarter of an un cuarto de
hour
hora
an hour
una hora
English
in an hour
in a while
until ten
o’clock
before nine
o’clock
a half hour
media hora
after seven
o’clock
in the morning por la mañana since what
(a.m.)
time?
in the afternoon por la tarde
since eight
(p.m.)
o’clock
in the evening por la noche
one hour ago
(p.m.)
at what time? ¿a qué hora?
early
at exactly nine a las nueve en late
o’clock
punto
at about two
a eso de las
late (in
o’clock
dos
arriving)
Spanish
en una hora
dentro de un
rato
hasta las
diez
antes de las
nueve
después de
las siete
¿desde qué
hora?
desde las
ocho
hace una
hora
temprano
tarde
de retraso
Focusing on Parts of Speech
Too many people try to translate word for word from English
to Spanish. And that just doesn’t work. Why? Because a
Spanish word may have many applications depending on
its usage (for example, as a noun or as an adjective) in the
sentence. In addition, many idiomatic phrases, when used
properly, distinguish a native speaker from someone who’s
unfamiliar with the language. (An idiomatic phrase is a phrase
Chapter 1: Brushing Up on the Basics
15
used in a particular language whose meaning can’t easily be
understood by a literal translation of its component words.
An English example is “It’s raining cats and dogs.”)
Using nouns
A noun is the part of speech that refers to a person, place,
thing, quality, idea, or action. Here are some examples of
nouns in action:
✓ Person: The boy is friendly. (El muchacho es amable.)
✓ Place: I want to go home. (Quiero ir a casa.)
✓ Thing: I would like to see that book. (Quisiera ver ese
libro.)
✓ Quality: I admire her courage. (Admiro su coraje.)
✓ Idea: Communism is a political theory. (El comunismo es
una teoría política.)
✓ Action: The plane’s departure is imminent. (La partida del
avión es inminente.)
In everyday speaking/writing, you use nouns most often in the
following forms:
✓ As the subject of a verb:
María speaks Spanish. (María habla español.)
✓ As the direct object of a verb:
I see María. (Yo veo a María.)
✓ As the indirect object of a verb:
I speak to María. (Yo le hablo a María.)
✓ As the object of a preposition:
I went out with María. (Yo salí con María.)
Unlike English nouns, all Spanish nouns have a gender: masculine or feminine. All words you use to qualify or describe
a noun must agree with the noun with respect to gender. We
discuss this in more detail in Chapter 2.
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Spanish Essentials For Dummies
Substituting pronouns
A pronoun is a part of speech used in place of a noun. The following list outlines the pronouns we discuss in this book:
✓ Subject pronouns (see Chapter 3) are followed by the verb
expressing the main action in the sentence (I, you, he,
she, it, we, they):
You are nice. (Ud. es simpático.)
✓ Interrogative pronouns (see Chapter 5) ask a question
(who, which, what, and so on):
Who is that? (¿Quién es?)
✓ Direct object pronouns (see Chapter 2) replace direct
object nouns; they answer whom or what the subject is
acting upon. The direct object pronouns are me, te, lo, la
(le in Spain), nos, (os in Spain), los, and las (les in Spain):
I’ll be seeing you. (Te veo.)
✓ Indirect object pronouns (see Chapter 2) replace indirect
object nouns; they explain to or for whom something is
done. They include me, te, le, nos, (os in Spain), and les:
He wrote to me. (Me escribió.)
✓ Reflexive pronouns (see Chapter 3) show that the subject
is acting upon itself (me, te, se, nos, [os in Spain]):
He sees himself in the mirror. (Él se ve en el espejo.)
✓ Prepositional pronouns (see Chapter 4) are used after
prepositions (mí, ti, él, ella, Ud., nosotros, vosotros (in
Spain), ellos, ellas, Uds.):
They’re going to the movies without me. (Van al cine
sin mí.)
Acting with verbs
A verb is a part of speech that shows an action or a state of
being. In Spanish, as in English, verbs change from their infinitive form (they’re conjugated, in other words) as follows:
✓ To agree with the person performing the action (I, you,
he, she, it, we, they)
Chapter 1: Brushing Up on the Basics
17
✓ To indicate the time when the action was performed
(past, present, future)
✓ To indicate the mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, conditional) of the action
The infinitive of the verb is its “raw” form — its “to” form —
before it’s conjugated. Infinitives in Spanish have three different endings, and you conjugate them according to these endings (-ar, -er, and -ir) when a subject is present or is implied.
We give you lots more information about verbs in Chapters 3,
6, 7, and 8.
Describing with adjectives
An adjective is a part of speech that describes a noun:
The house is white. (La casa es blanca.)
A Spanish adjective can have other applications, too, which
we outline in the following list:
✓ A possessive adjective tells to whom the noun belongs:
It’s my book. (Es mi libro.)
✓ A demonstrative adjective shows this, that, these, or those:
That film is good. (Esa película es buena.)
✓ An interrogative adjective asks the question whose, which,
or what:
Whose car is that? (¿De quién es ese coche?)
✓ A number (cardinal or ordinal; see the “Counting Down”
section earlier in this chapter) is an adjective that gives a
specific amount:
I need a pen. (Necesito un bolígrafo.)
It’s his tenth birthday. (Es su décimo cumpleaños.)
Clarifying with adverbs
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb:
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Spanish Essentials For Dummies
✓ Modifying a verb: You speak quickly. (Ud. habla
rápidamente.)
✓ Modifying an adjective: Her grandmother is very old. (Su
abuela es muy vieja.)
✓ Modifying an adverb: They eat too slowly. (Ellos comen
demasiado despacio.)
Joining with prepositions
Prepositions are words used before nouns or pronouns to
relate them to other words in the sentence. Prepositions
connect the following:
✓ Noun to noun: I need that piece of paper. (Necesito esa
hoja de papel.)
✓ Verb to verb: The child begins to laugh. (El niño empieza
a reír.)
✓ Verb to noun: She studies with her friends. (Ella estudia
con sus amigas.)
✓ Verb to pronoun: What do you think about them? (¿Qué
piensas de ellos?)